At MOWA, we seek to make Wisconsin art accessible to everyone around the world. In this spirit, we invite you to enjoy our ongoing series of beautiful exhibition catalogues that are offered as free downloads. Full-color printed deluxe hardcover and softcover versions are available for purchase from Blurb.com and many of the catalogues are also available for purchase in the MOWA Shop. Books sold in the MOWA Shop are often autographed by the artist.

To mark the most extensive exhibition of Gerit Grimm’s sculpture to date, MOWA has published a catalogue entitled, Gerit Grimm’s Fairytales: In a Time Neither Now Nor Then. With 60 full-color pages illustrating the exhibition, it contains essays by Glenn Adamson, senior scholar at Yale Center for British Art, and Graeme Reid, director of collections & exhibitions at MOWA. The catalogue is available for purchase in the MOWA Shop. Download a FREE digital copy

Florence Eiseman: Designing Childhood for the American CenturyDesigning Childhood for the American Century is a full-color exhibition catalogue chronicling the history of the Florence Eiseman brand with essays by Jennifer Farley Gordon, Ph.D., independent researcher, writer, and curator, Sarah Anne Carter, Ph.D., Curator and Director of Research of the Chipstone Foundation, and Natalie Wright, Charles Hummel Curatorial Fellow at the Chipstone Foundation, with photography by Lois Bielefeld.Download a FREE digital copy

Tom Bamberger: Hyperphotographic
Hyperphotographic celebrates the work of Tom Bamberger, who has expertly embraced a number of roles in his life—teacher, philosopher, curator of photography, urban design critic—but he is first and foremost a photographer of national significance. Hyperphotographic is the artist’s first major retrospective and a celebration of his recent gift to the Museum of Wisconsin Art of almost four hundred photographs. This stunning 124-page, full-color catalogue accompanies the exhibition and includes essays by Laurie Winters, Debra Brehmer, and J Tyler Friedman.Download a FREE digital copy

David Lenz: People on the PeripheryPeople on the Periphery celebrates the work of David Lenz, whose passionate and intimate depictions of inner-city children, people with disabilities, and rural farmers have made him one of America’s preeminent portrait painters. The artist’s remarkable Photorealist technique enhances the authenticity of his subjects—not portraiture’s traditional powerful and famous sitters but the poor, disabled, and marginalized—those on the periphery of society.Download a FREE digital copy

Gregory Conniff: Watermarks Gregory Conniff: Watermarks presents color photographs of the reflecting pool at the Olbrich Botanical Gardens in Madison, Wisconsin. The dazzling images flirt with abstraction and mark an entirely new vision for Conniff. Gregory Conniff found his subject in September of 2014 shortly before the pool was drained for the winter. He reengaged with the subject in April of 2015 and concluded the series in October. Download a FREE digital copy

Fred Stonehouse: The Promise of Distant ThingsFrom his home base of Wisconsin, Fred Stonehouse has established an international reputation as a leading Neo-Surrealist painter, with numerous gallery and museum exhibitions in the United States and around the world. Stonehouse’s enigmatic work is filled with strange, dreamlike characters who emanate from a mind inhabited by disparate people, places, artwork, literature, and personal experiences.Download a FREE digital copy

Wilde’s Wildes: A Very Private CollectionWilde’s Wildes: A Very Private Collection celebrates the private collection of John Wilde (1919–2006), one of the leading artists of the American Surrealism movement. Over seven decades, Wilde assembled a collection of his paintings and drawings—works that could have easily found homes in major museums or private collections—that he retained for his own enjoyment in his Wisconsin home. Wilde’s Wildes recreates this deeply personal collection, with artworks from every decade of his long career.Download a FREE digital copy

There’s a Place: A Three Decade Survey of Photographs by J. Shimon & J. LindemannJ. Shimon and J. Lindemann make photographs that respond to Wisconsin as both a place and a state of mind. Blending historic and contemporary photographic techniques, the artists have created a compelling, at times melancholy, body of work that stands as a record of their time. There’s a Place is the artists’ first museum retrospective and the largest exhibition of their work to date. Download a FREE digital copy

Tom Loeser: It Could Have Been KindlingInternationally recognized craftsman Tom Loeser refuses to be constrained by the conventions of furniture-making. In addition to his technical mastery, Loeser purposefully injects a sense of humor into his work. From almost anyone else, his dismissive remark “it could have been kindling” might seem overly self-deprecating, but Loeser transforms wood and paint into something simultaneously familiar, peculiar, intriguing, and beguiling.Download a FREE digital copy